dos Reis, Filipe; Kessler, Oliver --- "Legitimacy" [2019] ELECD 228; in d’Aspremont, Jean; Singh, Sahib (eds), "Concepts for International Law" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2019) 650

Book Title: Concepts for International Law

Editor(s): d’Aspremont, Jean; Singh, Sahib

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN: 9781783474677

Section: Chapter 42

Section Title: Legitimacy

Author(s): dos Reis, Filipe; Kessler, Oliver

Number of pages: 12

Abstract/Description:

This chapter reconstructs legitimacy as a fundamental concept in international legal thought. In our discussion, we identify four different ‘academic–political’ projects in which legitimacy fulfils a certain function: Thomas M. Franck’s attempt to combine a liberal sensitivity with the empirical rigor of American process approaches; Alan Buchanan’s project to ground legitimacy in liberal global governance institutions; the idea, in the aftermath of NATO’s Kosovo campaign, that interventions can be illegal but nevertheless legitimate; and finally Jutta Brunnée and Stephen M. Toope’s interactional account of international law and the idea of a genuine legal strand of legitimacy. We turn then to the productive or performative dimension of the concept, that is, from what ‘is’ legitimate towards what legitimacy ‘does’ as a concept in international legal thought. Legitimacy becomes then a reflexive concept through which lawyers are able to observe themselves in their context, evaluate their practices and reflect upon their discipline.